He knows that photographs have a material weight, a presence, far beyond their actual dimensions. In Yamamoto’s hands they become infinitely charmed objects, bearing some intangible energy, showing how we use pictures like fetishes and like trophies – the very object of memory. His own pictures are feint, inconsistent; there’s something necessarily unreadable about them. Deliberately worn and stained, as though carried in a pocket for some time, as though the images held some burden of reference than needed constant re-affirmation, tokens of the fugitive present, now presented as evidence of some obsession, as proof, finally, that recall can never touch its subject.

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Most of Yamamoto’s works could be held in the palm of your hand too; his exploration of size is arguably among the most astute in photography today. While the overwhelming trend has been to create monumental works, in line perhaps with the dog days of late capitalism, the intimacy he develops is not a reactionary critique of a “decadent” age; in fact what he whispers to you is far more subtle and it is this: there’s so much you haven’t seen you might as well not see at all, that you might as well be blind…